Friday, November 30, 2007

It is very tempting, when considering possible crossovers to write about, to look for characters with the same last name as the Daria character you are writing about, then work out how they could possibly be related to your central figure. (This works for everyone except a Morgendorffer.) For example, could Sandi Griffin be related to Peter Griffin of Family Guy? Though fun, the idea is a little sexist because you're talking only about relatives on Sandi's father's side, not her mother's, since we don't know her mother's maiden name and making up a maiden name is kind of like cheating, sort of.

Still, as long as we're being sexist, we may as well push the Griffin family envelope on Tom Griffin's side and see what we get. Oops, Roentgen beat everyone to the crossover. I would love to see more of that one.

A few other interesting fictional Griffins will be named later for interested writers. Some of them are very interesting indeed.

During their last summer together in Lawndale before Daria heads for college in Boston, Daria and Jane decide to become freelance investigative reporters for Sick, Sad World. Using a video camera and the guidelines for SSW stringers (per The Daria Database), they roam Lawndale looking for bizarre, fast-breaking stories, hoping to pick up some TV credits as writers and photographers.

And what do you know: they uncover something. And life is never the same again.

In The Daria Diaries, Adrian and Courtney send a postcard to the Lane home and announce that they have a dog. They are in the Petrified Forest of Arizona at the time. What is their dog, really? (I used this as a PPMB Iron Chef, but no one took the bait so we'll just guess.)

1. A regular dog with lots of fleas.2. A lazy coyote that lets the children feed it.3. A rabid dire wolf that thawed out of a glacier from the last Ice Age.4. A baby rhinoceros.5. A werewolf.6. A chupacabra.7. Bigfoot.8. Scooby-Doo.9. Dawg, from "Speedtrapped"10. Leary III from "That Was Then, This Is Dumb"11. J.B. from "A Hard Days' Night"12. Trent, who is asleep and has a leash around his neck.13. Brian Griffin ("Hey, can you kids get me a martini?)

Thursday, November 29, 2007

There's a neat little moment in "Sappy Anniversary" when Nora the information architect is giving a talk to her fellow pod people . . . er, work node, and at the end of her talk she smiles for just a microsecond (see at left). It's hard to catch, but it's there. Kinda cute.

We don't know much about young, red-headed Nora other than her carpal tunnel problems and her love of biomorphic Danish modern furniture (there really is such a thing, I looked it up on Google), but I would guess she is one of those introverted thinker types with a quirky sense of humor whose job is everything, working 90+ hour work-weeks. And she's rich, wildly rich, throwing away six gees just for a coffee table. And she likes black clothing. (I suppose it matches her wrist braces.)

Someone mentioned on one of the message boards (I forget who said it and which MB) that Joey was once seen walking with one of the background characters, a girl seen in some of Daria and Jane's classes, and sure enough right at the start of "Lucky Strike" there they are, Joey and wotzername. Wotzername is an Asian girl (see at right) who dresses in light pastels, and what in the world is Joey doing walking with her when he's supposed to be chasing Quinn? Is that thing with Quinn just a charade to throw everyone off the track? What does this girl see in a twit like Joey? Isn't this just like high school, nattering on about this? We should pass notes about it in study hall.

Daria has two cousins, one on her mother's side and as best as we can tell one on her father's. Erin Danielson (née Chambers) is the former, and though we see her only in "I Don't," tales of her marital woes crop up in several fifth-season episodes.

You would think a cousin of Daria would merit much weighty fanfic, but this is not the case for this poor thing. To be sure, Kara Wild, Crusading Saint, and Richard Lobinske have written excellent stories about her and her new (dork) husband Brian, but Erin is a difficult subject and not many other authors want to tangle with a shallow, two-dimensional character that Kara once christened "Erin the Head."

The trick, as KW, CS, and RL have shown us, is to make Erin interesting, and that is a real challenge. A divorce from Brian is an often explored theme in stories about her, but what else could be done? Could it be that she, not Brian, was the intelligence agent? Could she have an interesting hobby that is somewhat dangerous? Does she have a dark secret in her past? Could she be more than she seems? What would Daria think of that?

LATE ADD:Brother Grimace has reminded me that Erin appears in "It's All About Respect," and there she has a very interesting post-Brian life as a children's book author, with a very interesting post-Brian squeeze whom I dare not name. (And she doesn't have herpes.)

Cassandra, not Daria, comes to Lawndale High School in "Esteemsters." Does she end up in the self-esteem class, or does she end up teaching it with Mr. O'Neill? How will Jane react to a fellow artist who is very much like Jane's mother in personality? What the heck happened to Daria & family back in Highland that caused Cassandra to make the move instead?

Wednesday, November 28, 2007

If you happen to know of any interesting Daria-related websites not mentioned in the left column, please post them here in the Comments section, and I will check them out and add them in if they look good. I've added in loads of dormant sites, just because they looked interesting to me. French and other non-English language sites are also welcome.

This is one of the better images of Kelly, taken from a crowd scene in "The Lawndale File." (Her name, like so many others, was on O'Neill's seating roster in "Cafe Disaffecto.") Kelly has curly red hair, freckles (I think), and, other than appearing to perform time travel in the flashback in "The Misery Chick," has no other noteworthy habits. She never speaks. She's a blank slate.

Anyone know of anything she does that's interesting in the series? Anything?

No, I don't mean as lovers, that's been done to death. I mean, Alison stays bi but doesn't try to seduce Jane. They become good friends, maybe even best friends. Jane finds out about Alison's preferences later, but they remain close and don't fool around. (Assume Alison doesn't lower herself to jump Dotson, either.)

What happens then? Play it out in your head. The whole fifth season changes with Alison added in. She had real potential. Awesome.

So, what was it with that snarky Helen-Linda competition that seemed to be going on all the time, like in "Gifted" and "Fair Enough"? Was that supposed to be a reflection of what was going on between Quinn and Sandi, some kind of power struggle, like daughter like mother? Because Helen was no threat at all to Linda, but Linda kept firing off these subtle and not-so-subtle put-downs and self-important pronouncements, so you start to wonder, what's going on with Linda? Helen's acting pretty normal, all things considered, so maybe Linda's got an inferiority complex which has no basis in reality, as far as I can tell. Linda's kicking butt at her work, it sounds like. Is she living out her life through Sandi, then, so that's why she feels threatened by both Quinn and Helen? Linda really gives you the impression she's not a nice person, though she doesn't commit any horrendous crimes. Fanfic writers don't like her, that's for sure. Weird.

Jennifer the Burnout Chick (or Cindy, or Karen, or whatever the heck her name is) has a small following among Daria fans, so here is a picture of Jen wearing a late 1960s granny gown, taken from "Legends of the Mall" (the Rattling Girl story). Weird how you see a character in different clothing and she or he looks entirely different. Many of the characters in the retro-scenes of "Legends of the Mall" and in the dream scenes of "Murder She Snored" are quite striking. You start thinking, hey, why doesn't Tiffany wear her hair like that more often, and Quinn looks just like an Austin Powers girl with a pixie cut, Daria is way cool in that Hawaiian shirt, and so on and so forth until you need a brain transplant, not that I am saying you do, but that's how it goes. Whatever.

What if the ghost of an anorexic teen once haunted the nights of Lawndale, but it has somehow been disturbed, awakened, and angered, and it again seeks to feed upon the life force of young women? The particulars of her past might differ from Stacy's tale in "Legends of the Mall," but she might be single-minded in her quest to control the living and starve them to death, or even feed upon them like a vampire.

Robert should already be familiar to most fans. He appears a number of times on the show and in the books, and he even has speaking parts. A fair amount of info can be picked out about him.

A peer of Daria and Jane, Robert is on the Lawndale Lions football team and typically wears a blue long-sleeved sweatshirt or light sweater with a light blue undershirt, oversized gray shorts, light gray sneakers, and falling-down white athletic socks. His black hair is cut short, especially on the sides, and at times it appears spiky. A tall and powerfully built young man, Robert is very good in a fight (he broke Kevin's jaw with his fist) and has a guy's sense of humor, but he is polite, soft-spoken, and chivalrous to women ("Yes, ma'am"). He's not particularly bright (he goofed up Daria's name and has at best a C average in school, as Mack is the only football player who has better than that) and is a poor dancer, if the cheerleaders are any judge (see "Daria Dance Party"), but he can dress up nicely with a suit jacket and string tie (see DDP). His car appears to be a dark blue mid-1990s Ford Mustang convertible. Quinn lets him sit at the Fashion Club lunch table at school, a sign of how well liked he is.

Robert doesn't appear to be dating anyone in particular in the series, but it is amusing that he was, if memory serves, Daria's first actual date, even if the date didn't last very long. She went out with him in "The New Kid" even before going out with Ted Dewitt-Clinton.

His appearance makes me think he might have some Native American heritage. His quiet demeanor suggests an introverted, strong-but-silent type with a pleasant nature, unless riled by another guy. He's putty in the hands of Quinn and probably other women as well. He might hunt, fish, go horseback riding, etc. An interesting subject for a shipper, if IQ isn't the gold standard.

Looking for an extraterrestrial alien for your next science-fiction Daria fanfic . . . but you want the alien to be in canon? Well, look no further. Daria presents several different aliens in addition to the standard greys (which appear in The Daria Diaries). From "Esteemsters" (at left), we have the model of a giant purple insectoid alien at the UFO convention in Lawndale, at the show's end (Daria and Helen shown for size comparison), and from a SSW show on "It Happened One Nut" we have the four-legged green alien with three eyestalks, looking for a bathroom (at right). Several other alien species appear on the show, but we'll content ourselves with these for now. (The green alien supplied the basic idea for the nuke boxes in "A Hard Days' Night.")

Here is the infamous moment in "The Misery Chick" where we discover that the background guy nicknamed Shaggy (actually Dewey, according to Mr. O'Neill's seating chart in "Cafe Disaffecto") was a time traveler, visiting a football game with Tommy Sherman three years earlier, when Shaggy would have been 13 or so and in 7th grade.

Look closer, though. Every single person in the shot, except for the blonde in the foreground, is one of the background students present in Daria and Jane's classes in 10th grade, and they look exactly as they do three years later. Aside from Shaggy, we have (in the back row, left to right) the blonde girl who got a bad crystal ball reading from Barch in "Fair Enough," the kid in the blue jacket who sits a few seats behind Daria in some of her classes, and the Asian kid I think of as "Pink Shorts," who appears in "The Misery Chick" watching Tommy stride down the hallways. The red-haired girl on the front right is Kelly, who sits in the back of the room in Daria's first-season classes with Mr. O'Neill.

Yeah, so the animators botched it a little . . . or did they? Can some or all of Daria's classmates travel through time? Are Daria and Jane the only normal kids in the school? (Normal being a relative term here.)

I know I brought this up on PPMB some time ago, but what is it with Mack and motorcycles? There are three shots of Mack on two-wheelers in the alter-egos on the MTV website, with Evel Knievel Mack and Easy Rider Mack shown here. (Not shown is Shriner Mack on a minibike.)

As Mack is commonly perceived as the masculine ideal for the Dariaverse (as he is almost without flaw and every other man is a mentally challenged dork), it makes sense for him to have a studly ride. This begs for both fanfic and more art, but mostly for more fanfic. A great postcanon story is buried here. Let it be free.

...I haven't yet figured out a theme for this fandom blog, except for anything Daria-ish, so I will continue posting anything that comes to mind as I think of it. One thing I am doing is going through my load of computer files of Daria stuff and picking out anything that looks interesting to me. I hope it's of interest to you, too, but if not . . . I guess you're stuck with it. (Heh heh heh heh heh...)

I can post only 99 thingers a month with this blog, so I will try to use the space wisely. Again, if I fail to do so, you're stuck with it.(Heh heh heh heh heh...)

Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Austen Covello gave the fandom name of Tori Jericho to the blonde girl seen pointing out which teens were popular (or not) in "The Invitation," and Tori appears in a number of his fanfics. She can be seen dancing in the same episode, while Daria looks on in mild annoyance.

Tori appears to be a peer of Quinn and the Fashion Club, as she shows up in Quinn's English class in "Quinn the Brain," sitting in the back of the room. Oddly, she sits behind a girl with glasses who later appears in Daria and Jane's graduating class in Is It College Yet? In front of the class sits a goth girl who also graduates with D&J.

Tori appears in the series as late as the fourth season, standing by a boy (a date?) as both are pelted with candy by the Lawndale Lions football team. To the best of my knowledge, aside from these three times, Tori does not reappear in the series. It is odd that she does not figure in the series, being as (assumedly) popular as she is. She has no trouble associating with the Fashion Club. Maybe she was happy being in a club by herself.

Oh, what the heck, let's see what we can do. Here are some works from PPMB.

Recent Works in Progress on PPMB

Apocalyptic Daria: Volume IIIBeen Here Before, by The SidheBliss Ticks Medley, by WacoKidBroken Connections, by SleeplessCole Barksdale, by CAPThe Crow-Daria Ascension, by legendeldThe Cynic, the Fashionista, and the Jackass, by DoggieboyDaria 1/2, by LSauchelliEldritch Evolution 2: Road to Heroism, by LSauchelliEmbers, by AngelboyEsteem Roller, by legendeldEvil Daria Vignettes II, by many writersGeneration Gap, by RLobinskeHousing Daria, by LSauchelliLane Change, by Ranger ThorneLegion of Lawndale Heroes, Volume Two - Episode 1.1, by Brother GrimaceMental in the Morning, by CypherMore Apocalyptic Daria, by NightGoblynThe Mystery Chick, by LSauchelliA New Set of Rules, by DennisPaint, by legendeldStacy Rowe, Seeker: Part II, by jtranswerTurnabout Confusion, by Dennis

Recently Completed Stories on PPMB

Almost Like Sisters, by Ranger ThorneBoston, by legendeldDirty, by legendeldEldritch Evolution, by LSauchelliHappy Thanksgiving to Everyone! by legendeldHeartbeat in Iambic, by DennisThe Heather/Damsel Chronicles 10: Bitter Harvest, by NightGoblynHomecoming, by legendeldIt Happens, by legendeldJustice, by legendeldLawndale's Finest: The Last Daughter of Krypton, by NightGoblynLegacy, by legendeldOf Metal and Men, by legendeldThe One and the Other, by JPAGCProdigal Son, by legendeldQuinn: Senior Citizen, by NightGoblynRun, by legendeldStacy Rowe, Seeker: Part I, by jtranserThat Was Daria, by legendeldA Trick or Treat (story trilogy), by legendeldWho Died? by legendeld

I've doubtless missed a few, let me know which ones. I would love to put in links but I would go mad doing so, not that anyone would notice.

One of the more interesting nonhumans in the show is Joanna, the prize $1,000 boa constrictor from the "Our Furry and Scaly Friends" pet store in the Lawndale Mall. From the way the snake is drawn, it looks like a Burmese python, about 8 feet long. Thanks to Quinn (and Joey), Joanna was able to make her escape from the store, and the conclusion of "It Happened One Nut" does not reveal if she was recaptured. What if she wasn't, and is still on the loose in Lawndale?

It would be interesting to toy with Joanna as intelligent, perhaps even magical and capable of speech. Maybe she is an offspring of Jörmungandr who came through the wormhole behind Good Time Chinese. Maybe she's from Harry Potter's universe, a lost or outcast mascot of Slytherin. Even without that, hunting (or avoiding) a live, large python creeping around Lawndale would make for an interesting adventure.

An interesting AU idea: What if Sandi and her mother really were witches? They can't be very nice ones. How would the Dariaverse have been different? Linda seems to have been very successful in life, but Sandi less so. Perhaps Sandi is just an inexperienced witch, prone to make mistakes and suffer spell backfires. Interesting possibilities for crossovers with Harry Potter, Bewitched, Charmed, etc. This idea has been tried only once, that I know of, and it is ripe for revisiting.

One interesting thing about Lawndale High School is that over a five-year period (three years in "Lawndale time") we see a lot of Daria and Jane's classmates, and some of Quinn's classmates, but nothing at all (as far as I know) of the students in grades before or after them. Where are the juniors and seniors of seasons one and two? Where are the freshmen and sophomores of season five and Is It College Yet? We do see the soon-to-be freshmen that Daria and Jane escort through school in "Boxing Daria,"and a few students who long ago graduated, but that's about it.

There are a few possibilities for older students. Andrea mentioned having a brother named Damien in her "Gothic Nights" comic in The Daria Database; though she gave herself a name other than her own, one could assume Damien exists since she named and modeled other characters in her strip after her classmates. Jesse Moreno has a younger brother named Danny, according to The Daria Database; Danny is in charge of Mystik Spiral's fan club and puts out the club newsletter. Jesse and Trent Lane should be about the same age, as they were classmates, so Danny is under 21 in seasons one and two and possibly just a grade or two ahead of Daria.

Certainly, some of the Lawndale Lions football players should be from upper and lower grades, though for some reason all the cheerleaders are in Daria's grade (as they all go to Great Prairie State together after leaving high school, per Is It College Yet?). Perhaps some of the once-mentioned-but-never-seen characters in the series are upper- or lowerclassmen, like Teddy Wozniak, of whom Brittany daydreams in "Life in the Past Lane." (Teddy could be of any grade level from 9-12, since Daria & co. are seniors in the fifth season.)

Depictions of older students are hard to find, since most of the background students seen in the TV series appear in either Daria's classes or Quinn's. One would have to carefully search through screen shots to pick out students who don't appear anywhere else but in the hallways. True, I know the animators weren't thinking about this when they did the series, but mining information can be fun!

Monday, November 26, 2007

In "The New Kid," we learn that Janet Barch is the faculty adviser for the Lawndale High School Science Club. What can we conclude from that?

1. Probably no boys can stand to be in the club, given that they have to put up with Ms. Barch at every meeting.

2. The girls in the club get all the attention, equipment, and funding they want.

So, which students would be in the Science Club? Is it the same as or related to the "jet propulsion club" that meets at Lawndale's planetarium, per Sandi Griffin in Is It Fall Yet? Would Daria have joined the club in an alternate universe? And what exactly does the Science Club get to do? And in how many ways could a science project go wrong?

Andrea (an-DRAY-ah, I think it's pronounced) is shown here sketching a nice coffin in class in "The F Word." In The Daria Database we were also treated to "Gothic Nights," a four-panel comic strip she apparently drew under the nickname Andrea666. She calls herself Queen Hecuba in the comic, Hecuba being the queen of Troy at the time of the Trojan War. Andrea knows her Greek mythology. If the comic in TDD is any indication of her work, she's pretty darn good at drawing and scripting.

Andrea's goth appearance seems to overshadow her artistic and poetic talents in most fanfic, but clearly Jane has a competitor in the fine arts field. Wonder how she put it to use after high school. Graphic novels? Advertising? Political cartoons? Internet comics?

Since I last wrote about Bob the background guy with green hair, I've seen a few other pictures of him in my files. At left we have him cheering the annoying DJs in "Jake of Hearts," and at right is an image from I forget which episode, in which a VERY neon-green-haired Bob is sitting with a girl in the auditorium (with Jane and Daria sitting behind the couple). The girl's name is (drum roll) Jennifer, being one of the three girls with that name in Mr. O'Neill's class in "Cafe Disaffecto." Could she be a sometime girlfriend?

So, now we know that Bob wears olive-green cargo pants with the legs ripped off, and Army boots, and God knows how or why his parents let him leave the house like that every morning to go to school, or how Principal Li puts up with it, so he must be really good at something that makes Laaaawndale High look good. He's about as alternative or punk as you can get, violating most schools' dress codes, but there he is.

If you can use Bob in a fanfic and explain all this, more power to you. Beats the heck out of me.

Before there was Tom, there were Brett and Brad, Upchuck's much cooler cousins (last name assumedly Ruttheimer but we aren't sure). We meet them for a brief, wonderful period in "Daria Dance Party," and then Daria and Jane perform a horrible cop-out and run away, only to fall into the clutches of EVIL THOM, AH HA HA HA HA HA whatever.

If there was ever an AU begging for a writer, this one is the one. I mean, among all the other AUs begging for writers. I know a couple of people have taken shots at this one, but I don't recall any long-term relationships coming out of them, and there really should be. They were perfect for each other, the four of them. *sigh* What could have been . . . and could yet be. Maybe they'll meet again in Boston, who knows. Anyone up for this?

Sunday, November 25, 2007

Those wacky Daria animators were certainly fond of girl goths and girls with ankhs. In "Quinn the Brain" is this scene showing yet another girl with an ankh sitting in front of Stacy Rowe in Mr. O'Neill's class. Nothing else is known about this ankh girl, though a few seats in front of her is another goth girl, who for some reason is shown graduating with Daria and Jane in Is It College Yet?

One of the better young-adult novels of the 1990s was Caroline B. Cooney's The Face on the Milk Carton. A 15-year-old girl sees her own childhood photo on a milk carton, opening a disturbing mystery about her past that only her parents (if that is who they really are) can answer.

The picture at right came from one of the Daria websites years ago, I forget where, and shows "The Head" as a missing kid. The drawing was probably a prototype done for foreign (South Korean, I think) cartoonists to see what a milk carton looked like when they were creating animated scenes for the Daria show.

So, what if during school lunchtime one of the show's characters saw her or his picture on a milk carton, with an entirely different name?

The type font that was used for the Daria logo and the show's episode titles (or a very close approximation thereof) is the Stereo Hifi font created by Cathy Davies. The font is free for downloading in many places on the Internet. The full copyright notice (which is not often reproduced) reads: "Copyright: Stereo Hifi is copyright 1997 by Cathy Davies. It is free for use as long as credit is given where due. Damn you thieves." Interesting that Daria and that font appeared in the same year. Hmmm . . .

One place you can download the font (and examine three other of Ms. Davies's very interesting free fonts) is here. Another is here, and yet another is here. A step-by-step description of how to load a new font on your computer (assuming you are using Microsoft products) is here. Once you have the font, you might be surprised at all the stories and websites that have been using it.

Late Add: If all else fails, you can download the font from Outpost Daria, too. Look under "TruType Font."

Under "Fan Fiction," the two-year-old "Odd Ships" thread begun by Scarlett (the IUF member and fan, not the character) has been revived, with more truly odd but potentially useful shipper pairs suggested by playful fans.

"Cybercity Lawndale," a cyberpunk Daria story by JJXB, was continued in November. The only serial story seen here that also appears on PPMB is "Apocalyptic Daria," which has a separate thread of reader-supplied alternate-universe changes and endings.

I knew I was going to regret this. Start a website and it takes over your brain in no time. A bazillion ideas have been pestering me for things to add to the site, to the point that I'm going through all my computer files and emptying them of topic ideas. You who are reading this, you brought this on yourselves! This is all your fault!

Now that we have that out of the way, please look for improvements and upgrades and new bits, like the pictures on the left and so on. This blog style allows for slideshows, but I have to build a Daria slideshow first.

I am also adding some more links at left, and I note that there are at least two little-used but still active fan message boards. You might want to try them out and see what gets going, just as alternatives to the usual PPMB and SFMB. Whatever floats your boat.

Suppose that in "The Lawndale File," the alien expert on Sick, Sad World was right: there are aliens walking among us (or, rather, among the people of Lawndale). Who is (or are) the aliens, and what do they want?

. . . I know what I like! I used to complain to myself that the previous DFB did not announce updates of fanfiction as often as I wanted. Now that I am doing a blog, I understand perfectly why that was: sticking in the @#$%%&!! hyperlinks and listing everything is HARD!Still, it seems worth doing it for the artwork, which lately has been just outstanding across the board. Here are some of the marvelous works of eye candy appearing on PPMB this month, in no particular order. At present I am avoiding the reproduction of the actual pictures to avoid copyright issues with the artists.

S.C. returns with Daria as "The Cleaner" (professional assassin, as per the movie The Professional).

Quinn and Sandi star in S.C.'s "17," a parody of the out-of-control-teen movie 13.

S.C. reveals the progressive production stages of his Daria"Cast Portrait" (lots of WIP pictures in this very long thread).

Acidgirl captures the essence of "Emo Jane" from the AU fanfic "Exchange Students."

This is Bob (the background guy). He never says a word in the entire Daria series, but thanks to Mr. O'Neill's seating chart in "Cafe Disaffecto," we know his first name. We know only a tiny bit more about him.

Bob has spiky green hair, a chain going from a piercing in his nose to his left ear, a ring piercing his right eyebrow, a necklace of some sort, a thick leather watchband on his left wrist, a tattoo on his upper left arm, a dull expression, a gray pullover shirt with the sleeves torn off leaving ragged shoulder edges, and long slacks or cargo pants. He is seen driving (recklessly, on his way to crash a party) in "The Invitation" while a friend screams out the passenger window. His build looks muscular. He hangs out with other Lawndale High School kids here and there. He first appears in "Esteemsters," sitting behind Daria in the self-esteem class. (How'd he get there? Probably his appearance did it.) He usually sits in the back of the classroom.

Some guesses about Bob: He's a wrestler or weightlifter (or both). He's not terribly bright but knows how to have a good time (though he gets into trouble). His appearance is off-putting. He's been going to Lawndale High for a while, since he wasn't in the group of new students with Daria and Quinn in "Esteemsters."

In the eternal argument over the exact nature of Daria's political persuasion, one interesting bit of evidence is the essay, "Ms. Softie," from the MTV website. The first sentence is nothing if not a slam against Bush. The other essays in "The World According to Daria" are also interesting in that they apparently show that the Morgendorffer home has a basement (two different references) and Daria is still being sarcastic after 9/11.

IMHO, though, Daria comes off less well in her essays than on the show. Some of her writings are downright annoying, and that countdown thing she does gets old quickly. Still, there is a lot of material here for fanfic generation, plus loads of trivia (e.g., Daria's blood type is 0+).

Brother Grimace is looking for a new superhero for the Legion of Lawndale Heroes series (click here for more information). There is a deadline, but plenty of time at the moment to submit your suggestions. Mack Mackenzie just got his powers in a recent installment of the story. Who will be next: Trent Lane? Tad and Tricia Gupty? Ted Dewitt-Clinton? Amy Barksdale? Jennifer the Burnout Chick?

Here's another rarely used character from the expanded Dariaverse (by way of Beavis and Butt-head): Dallas Grimes, half of the "mom and pop" gun-smuggling ring featured in Beavis and Butt-head Do America. Dallas is clever, dangerous, and superb at escaping bad situations using trickery and deceit. She is beautiful and has no moral sense whatsoever, except to do what she must to save herself and get rich.

Dervish made good use of Dallas in her "Something to Shoot For" series. Aside from that, I don't think she's made an appearance in Daria fanfic. Remember, at the end of the B&B movie, she was to be set free by the feds for ratting on "Muddy" Grimes, though she might be followed.

Friday, November 23, 2007

One of the background characters in Daria is "The Head," a glasses-wearing kid in the self-esteem class in "Esteemsters." He has only one line in the show but reappears now and then through at least the fourth season. He gets his nickname from his T-shirt, which advertises another MTV cartoon of the 1990s, named of course The Head.

The reason that this reference is so interesting is because Daria the show is linked to Beavis and Butt-head, as everyone knows, but Beavis and Butt-head is also linked to The Head, because according to Wikipedia, Butt-head makes a cameo appearance in an episode of The Head. If so, all three universes are linked, and characters from The Head can appear in Daria fanfic.

The question is, who knows anything about The Head? A VHS tape was made of the show's first season (called The Head Saves the Earth), but it is difficult to find. Some checking around on the Internet also shows that the characters from The Head are pretty strange. Hey, Daria had some strange stuff on it, too.

If anyone knows more about The Head, drop some notes here about the crossover potential.

I don't like writing much about myself, but a few notes here might be appropriate. The Great Daria Fandom Implosion over the summer was very upsetting, and I greatly missed both the people and websites that left the fandom. The drop in fan websites has been going on for some time, and people do come and go, but it still bugged me.

So, finding myself stuck for a long period while plotting out a "Sandi in the Bermuda Triangle" story (lots of notes, not a lot of writing), I thought I'd try this.

One thing the previous Daria Fandom Blog used to do was announce when certain stories were posted or updated. I'm not sure I can keep up with that here, so I added a link at left to the big fanfic lists I've been keeping on PPMB and SFMB. I will try to update those tonight or tomorrow.

Baby-name websites are often interesting for fanfic purposes. The idea of an AU story about Sandi Griffin was recently floating about in my head, for instance, so for the heck of it I looked her up on ThinkBabyName.com and discovered Sandi was a variation on Alexandra. Another fanfic writer had already made use of this data in a great story some years ago ("Everything's Cool and Froody," by Jill Palmer), and she had a great twist on it, in that the AU Sandi had a different version of this name, Alex. (I think this AU came about because Sandi was not held back in school, and as she's the same age as Daria, she was in Daria's grade, not Quinn's.) If you have more than one version of a character, each from a different AU, give one of them a variant name (in Sandi's case, Lexi, Alexis, Sandra, Zondra, etc.).

About halfway through the episode, "Groped by an Angel," the Fashion Club is in a school hallway listening to Quinn talk about her guardian angel, when Sandi (who has had enough of playing second fiddle) says, "I mean, I have a guardian angel, too. I just don't brag about it all the time." Though subsequent events seem to show Sandi was just making that up, what if she wasn't? Interesting fantasy or AU possibility there. If anyone wants to use the idea, be my guest.

I know I am going to regret this, but that never stopped me before, so . . .

Having hit a creative brick wall of late, but wanting to stay active in both writing and in Daria fandom, I've decided to start a fandom blog modeled after a much better and more interesting predecessor, The Daria Fandom Blog (now extinct, or at least extremely dormant). I respectfully take off my hat to CINCGREEN for the great work he did on that earlier blog and to everyone else who helped him.

[respectful pause]

Okay. This is a blog about Daria fandom, fanfiction, fan art, fans, etc. I have no idea what will be in it, as I am making this up as I go along. I am not even sure how to do all the neat things the previous blog did, like adding pictures and stuff, but I will try to figure it out as we go. (Yes, I see the "add image" icon, but I don't know what it does. I will experiment with it later.)

This is a chance for me to try something new and creative in the fandom and avoid burnout, plus kill time and goof off when I should be cutting up the leftover turkey and storing it away in small Tupperware boxes. Whatever. Wish me luck, and I hope you enjoy having another place to look at Daria-related stuff online. Party on.

Fandom supersites

Daria supersites are comprehensive, content-rich websites designed by and for fans of the series. By definition, supersites offer a variety of links to other Daria fansites, but a true supersite offers much more—character descriptions, fanfiction archives, fan art galleries, essays and fan commentaries, message boards, screen-capture galleries, episode transcripts, downloadables, contests and quizzes, Dariacon information, etc. The designation of a fan site as a supersite is a matter of opinion, but the following sites (most of which are no longer updated) have made a serious effort to be comprehensive and offer a variety of material.

Series summaries

Daria summaries are webpages offering overviews of the TV series (1997-2002). Character images, episode synopses, and voice-actor lists are usually presented; some include links to other Daria sites. In most, little or no fan content appears, but some sites allow for fan reviews and commentary. Summary pages are often unoriginal copies of pages from Wikipedia or other sources about the show.

Latest fanworks

Many thanks to The Angst Guy for compiling the 2007-2010 fanfiction contributions, TheExcellentS for compiling the 2011 and 2012 fanfiction contributions, and Richard Lobinske for compiling the 2007-2011 fan art contributions.

Daria-on-DVD activism

Internet stores and product reviews are mixed together below, as one often includes the other. Note the special section with reviews and advice on the Daria's Inferno computer game. See also the important information at the end of this list.

Daria items licensed by MTV are no longer available from Hot Topic, but these might be found on resale sites.

WARNING!Not all items that appear under search queries for "Daria" are officially licensed from MTV. No guarantees are made by this website for quality, relevance, or anything else. This list is only for your personal interest and amusement. Caveat emptor!

Blasts from the past

Thanks to theWayBack Machine at Archive.org, many of the Daria websites of yesteryear that were taken down can be recovered, in whole or in part, for our interest today. Earlier versions of current websites are also intriguing; many fanfics that were deleted by request of their authors turn out to still be available through the WayBack Machine. Suggestions for additions to this listing are welcome.

However, the WayBack Machine is not guaranteed to recover all or even most of a website. In some cases, just the skeleton of the site is left, without images or downloads. Some webpages are glitch-filled and need to be fixed by the Archive staff before viewing. (Write to the staff to describe problems in recovering old sites, if the issues seem fixable.) Enjoy surfing down memory lane.

About the people who post here

Followers

Tiny legal print

"Daria" and all related proper names and images are trademarks or copyrighted material of MTV Networks, and are used herein without its permission. This site is intended solely to celebrate and publicize these characters and their creators. No commercial benefit, nor any use beyond the "fair use" review and commentary provisions of United States copyright law and related case law, is either intended or implied. I'm not making any money off this, believe me, but I am having fun!